Expo 2017: Future Energy, Astana, Kazakhstan

Madeleine Laura
Jul 14, 2017
4 min read

Opening Times: 10 June - 10 September 2017, 9.00 am - 11.00 pm Monday to Sunday.

Ticket Price: Ticket price varies from 4000Tinge Monday to Friday, to 6000Tinge on weekends when the site is a lot busier, to 10000Tinge or more for a multiple day ticket. Although the site is busier at weekends, or between 11 and 3pm on week days, it never truly feels busy because it is such a big territory. Unless you decide to visit Germany or Korea at peak times, you should be fine.

Location: Expo 2017 is located in the South of the City of Astana, opposite the Nazarbayev University. I usually give a more specific address for visitable places, but Expo is impossible to miss if you’re in Astana. The giant Sphere can be seen for kilometers, especially at night when a beam of light shines into the nights sky - similar to the Twin Towers Memorial in New York City.

How To Get There: Transport to Expo is regular, with buses 10 and 12 that run through the entire city North-South/South-North passing every 5-10 minutes. There are also Eco-Buses that run on solar power that go straight to the site. These buses are brand new and were made especially to promote Expo’s theme: Future Energy. We use the App ‘2Gis' if we have any transport problems in Astana, or if we need to find a faster route.

In the first section of this Vlog we explore Expo 2017, and in the second half we hitch hike from Astana to Almaty.

Popular Pavilions

The countries we were regularly being told to go to and that had huge queues, when we visited 2 weeks after Expo opened where:

- Kazakhstan

- Germany

- Korea

- Switzerland

- Japan

Each of these pavilions had queues for around 30 minutes. The only one of these pavilions we managed to see was Switzerland; full of Swiss natives, an interesting room design (small but simple) and lots of interesting facts and figures that are accessible to your average visitor who knows very little about green energy - like us... you can see why it is one of the more popular ones!

>> Just as a note: There are not too many pavilions with natives to that country present, many pavilions are full of Kazakh locals who speak fantastic English - Such as the British pavilion. <<

Our favourite

Our favourite was Lithuania (we might be a bit biased)! With no queue and full of Lithuanian natives who were specially picked due to their knowledge of the green energy Lithuania is working towards: Lasers… I personally didn’t even know this was an option, so I learnt a lot from our guide Remante, as well as Saulius who we found in Couch Surfing and had lunch with. There is also a huge room with lights and mirrors, to give you an idea of how laser green energy works - this room was really good fun!

Most Surprising Pavilion

Uzbekistan was a huge surprise for us. Our understanding of Uzbekistan is a country that has had a lot of economic problems over the years, leading to it being one of the poorer Central Asian countries. Uzbek history dates back thousands of years, with cities as old as 2000 years still standing today - unlike their nomadic neighbours Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. But entering this pavilion I really felt like I was in Korea or Japans pavilions… Robotics, futuristic looking cars… It was definitely not what I was expecting. There are also Uzbek natives that can give you a lot of information.

Other pavilions we saw

South America and Africa have huge pavilions for the whole continent. South America’s was quite quiet, with not so many natives but Kazakh locals with very extensive knowledge of their countries. Africa’s was full of native people, music and produce, with a busy market where guests can buy products from all over Africa.

We also saw:

- Turkey

- Saudi Arabia

- Argentina

- Vatican

- Greece

- Georgia

- The UAE

- Poland

- Serbia

- Singapore

- Czech Republic

Kazakhstan’s Pavilion

I can’t write about Expo, without writing about the Kazakhstan’s exposition, which is inside the huge central Sphere. The queue for the home countries pavilion is always long, but inside there are 7 floors of information about the steps Kazakhstan is making towards green energy… unfortunately we didn’t experience this pavilion as the queue was too big and we just didn’t have time to wait.

Others

There are many other pavilions for particular companies that are global leaders in green energy. In these pavilions you can learn more about solar energy and wind energy, or about the possibility of energy from plants and Formula 1-type racing cars built to run on electricity. You can also try out electric scooters and rickshaws.

Our experience here was incredibly interesting, we learnt a lot and it really felt like we had the opportunity to visit all these countries in a day. We spent a total of 7 hours here and felt like that was enough in one day. If you plan to see the whole exposition of over 150 countries, I would suggest taking multiple days to do this. Also bring your own water and food is possible because prices inside are very high, but you will also get the opportunity to eat foods from around the world.

So what are we doing to travel as green as possible?

- "Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints" is a motto we try to live by. Leaving our camping spots exactly as we found them, taking all rubbish with us

- Hitch hiking. Why pay for an extra vehicle that will pump more gas into the atmosphere, when you can catch a lift with someone going that way already?

- Using Anker's 21Watt, double USB, Solar Charger. This awesome piece of travel gear has saved us several times and keeps us heading in the right (green) direction. Follow the link above to find out more!